The New York Rangers were defeated 6-1 by the Buffalo Sabers on Thursday evening at Madison Square Garden.
Going into this game, the Rangers had only played on Sunday afternoon and the rust was clearly visible.
The Sabers set the tone by scoring less than 30 seconds into the game.
From the start, the Rangers played a slow game and just didn’t come in with any sense of urgency.
The real trouble came in the second period, when the Sabers scored three goals in a two-minute span.
This caused Peter Laviolette to pull Igor Shesterkin, who conceded five goals on just twelve shots in total.
Throughout the early part of the season, the Rangers relied on Shesterkin to be a superman, and eventually the Rangers caught up with them.
“We’ve been under siege a little bit too much, we’ve been relying on our goaltender too much,” Laviolette said.
It was just a poor performance by the Rangers and there’s no other way to put it.
It’s a game that wasn’t their own and the players in the locker room were well aware of that.
“As a group we were definitely not good enough tonight.” Jacob Trouba said. “We’ll go back and look at it, learn lessons from it and move on.
The Rangers travel to Detroit on Saturday night to take on the Red Wings.
